A life-changing experience

Thursday

May 10, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 10, 2007 at 10:16 AM

I came to the United States in October 2005, when I was 15 years old. When I came, I left pretty much everything, my friends, my family, and especially my mother and my little sister. I came here because the situation in my country was not really good, and also my father wanted a better education for my sister, my brother and me. I can say that I never regretted being an immigrant.

Ralph Valcin

I came to the United States in October 2005, when I was 15 years old. When I came, I left pretty much everything, my friends, my family, and especially my mother and my little sister. I came here because the situation in my country was not really good, and also my father wanted a better education for my sister, my brother and me. I can say that I never regretted being an immigrant.

When I landed at the Miami airport, I was not that impressed because the weather was warm like in Haiti, but when I got to Massachusetts, I was really impressed and excited and the buildings put me in shock. I was so impressed with their height and also the weather and the lights because in Haiti it is rare to have electricity for an hour. I came here, only my brother and me, because my father could not come with us because he was in Iraq at that time. But we enjoyed the flights from Haiti to Florida and from Florida to Boston, and we had a little fun.

Framingham and Haiti are really different in everything. Framingham is bigger than the city I lived in and the people are different in colors and languages than the people who lived in my city in Haiti. People in Framingham have a strange and different culture as well. In Haiti, first of all the weather is really different. It’s always summer and people dress really simply in jeans, shirts, and sneakers or flip-flops--no coats or boots and gloves. Also, the population is really huge in Haiti and the houses are like little huts, but not all of them. The other houses are very different, because they are built with blocks and the roof with cement.

Even if there is terror in Haiti, everyone lives like family. When it’s very hot at night, we go and sit outside with the neighbors and we tell stories from the old days, or we just sit there and watch the moon and the stars. Also, electricity is one of the things that are really rare to have; where I lived if we had electricity for an entire day, it was a great miracle. Another rare natural source is water; it is like they scheduled it and if it comes this week, we have to fill tanks and drums so we can have it for the rest of the month or the rest of the week. We also don’t have washing machines. We wash our clothes by hand and it is really fun, but you spend a whole day, even two days before you finish washing the clothes and rinsing them and also you need to let them dry in the sun so it really takes a while because sometimes there is no sun for a couple of hours.

I never imagined life in the USA would be that difficult, and really different than the one I had in Haiti. But, little by little I have gotten accommodated with it, and throughout my life I’ve never been so proud to be something: an "immigrant." And since I immigrated my life has changed completely and I’m really glad, because now my life has a new start and I can see more of my future in front of me. I like it here because everything I want to do or I want to be I can do because there are a lot of opportunities in this country; that’s the main reason why I like it here.